Many different computing applications rely on some type of storage medium for persistent storage of various kinds of application data. For example, common office applications and multi-media applications generally use application data of various types and formats, such as documents, spreadsheets, still images, audios and video data, among others. Frequently, such data are stored for repeated access or use on behalf of the owner/user. More recently, such data may be stored remotely, possibly using hardware storage resources that are maintained and operated by third parties.
Very often, the data that is stored by a user may be accessed by that user or authorized guests via a variety of different devices, such as cell phones, tablet computers, laptop computers, or other devices. These devices may require different formats for viewing or use on the particular devices. If such data is stored remotely, often that data may have to be transcoded to an appropriate format so that the data will be usable by the device seeking access.